Maryannaville™

A new search engine targeted at people aged 50-plus called cRANKy.com launched last Tuesday. Billed as the first age-relevant search engine, the developer of the engine designed it to deliver the most targeted results for this demographic. They did so by applying a “50-plus lens to every query” so, the results are based on both search technology, reviews, and users ratings.

The word “cRANKy” reportedly doesn’t stand for “cRANKy old men” but rather for Customer Ranking of web sites. Moreover, it seems that cRANKy.com is more than Google’s or Yahoo’s type of search engines, it includes ratings created by cRANKy’s editors and its users, almost all of whom are over the age of 50.

After visiting a site, cRANKy will invite you to rate it. Added together, members’ ratings raise or lower a site’s ranking. The reactions and opinions of the community determine how the search engine ranks sites, making cRANKy the world’s first age-relevant search engine.

“The philosophy behind Cranky.com is the polar opposite of most search engines in the market today that define their success around capturing the entire Web,” says Jeff Taylor, founder and CEO of Eons. “It’s easy to type China trip’ in a popular search engine, but it can be over-whelming to navigate the 60 million results. We’ve discovered that, universally, the Eons Generation doesn’t like to wade through millions of search results. So, we created Cranky.com to engage this energetic group of Web explorers who embrace technology, including those who may not be as well-versed at Boolean searches and complex narrowing techniques as younger gen-erations who grew up on the Web.”

Key product features of Cranky.com, the first age-relevant search engine:

The “Power of Four:” A simple user interface displays on the first result page only the top four authoritative sites matching the search term (with additional results following) so that users get a consistent, dependable set of four vetted results every time.

Member Social Search: Eons members rate and review sites. These member ratings influence the top sites that are delivered as results in future Cranky searches, thus the more users engage with rankings over time, the better the search engine will become.

Expert Editorial Review: The Cranky age-relevant editorial team has reviewed the top 5,000 sites with a standardized editorial template that includes a simple description of the site, plus Cranky Tips: deep links and insider secrets on how to get the most out of these sites.

Eons Answers: In response to many queries, Eons also formulates an Eons answer that directs the user to the most relevant content on eons.com .

You can use cRANKy.com without signing up or revealing any information about yourself. However, to access the advanced features or to offer feedback about web sites, you need to obtain a free account. I did that and found the process to be simple. Once you are a cRANKy.com member, you can create a personal home page that displays information that youselect. You can also create your own (free) blog, join discussion groups and more.

You can check out all the features for yourself at http://www.cRANKy.com

Hat dip to Laura for the head’s up!

Originally posted 2007-01-15 16:40:00. Republished by Blog Post Promoter